Minimum Advertised Price (MAP)

Is there a way to add a Minimum Adverstised Price (MAP) feature to our carts? I deal with manufacturers that specify I cannot advertsie items for sale below $XX.XX. If I do, they’ll shut down my account. It’s called MAP requirements, and it’s becoming a lot more prevalent.

There is a way around this. You can allow a shopper to add the item to their cart to see the lowest price you can offer. It’s sort of similar to seeing websites where the seller says “the price is too low for us to show you here, add it to your cart to see the price”.

Does this capability exist on Bonanza? I have some high dollar items I’ll be listing, but I don’t want to violate manufacturer MAP requirements. At the same time, I want to offer the items for a lower cost since I can still make a profit.

Any idea on how to get this done? We are having it custom coded into our base website, but would like to use Bonanza as an additional sales channel.

The supplier has established a Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) for this product in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions. Selling a product to a consumer below this price will result in account suspension.

Update 9:30 PDT, it seems the post directly related to my comment has been deleted. I am sorry if I offended you.

Wait a minute folks. This is a completely ethical and acceptable approach, even according to the manufacturers. That’s why it’s so prevalent. Saying “don’t even go there” means you are leaving money and sales on the table if you deal with MAP pricing at all. Please call up your manufacturer or distributor and ask them to confirm what I am about to tell you. Most MAP agreeemens NEVER touch on the subject of what you can actually sell an item at, and that’s by design. They simply specify what price you must publicly ADVERTISE the item at.

The manufacturers (or distributors) want the playing field leveled for everyone, so when google crawls your site and everyone is listing at the same price, that’s the intent. They also want to protect the perceived value of their item in the marketplace.

However, most manufacturers have a very loose MAP requirement, and for good reason. They don’t want to prevent you from selling their product at a lower price. It benefits them AND you and the customer. There is nothing nefarious going on here. With the dozen or so manufacturers I deal with directly, ALL have said it’s completely fine to sell products under MAP. That’s why they call it the minimum ADVERTISED price. Or else I wouldn’t deal with them. Unless you have some totally hot item that is in demand, you could never compete by selling items at MAP prices.

Here’s a good example – check out a major photo supplier on Nikon or Canon products. Some products are listed at MAP. You simply add it to your cart for a lower price. Do you think Nikon would stand for one of the largest national sales chains allowing this to happen? That’s how I got my $300 camera – a MAP price – for $249 with free shipping.

Now if I was working with a manufacturer or distributor that had language in the MAP agreement that said “thou shalt not advertise OR SELL our products below our specified pricing” you bet I would honor that agreement. I signed my name to that agreement in order to sell the product. And I don’t hide my business name in order to openly violate MAP agreements like so many others do. Patriot Family Supply is actually the registered name of my business.

Hopefully that clears this up for y’all – at least my viewpoint. My question still stands.

And people on this site ARE selling below MAP. It’s called using the “make an offer” button. So the list the product at MAP as their asking price (i.e., $99.99) but they’ve added the “make an offer” button which means they’ll accept less. Same concept. MAP agreement wasn’t violated.

Anyway, I’m simply asking if there is ever going to be a feature to available that would allow the buyer to “add to cart for lower price”. Probably doesn’t fit with the Bonanza model, but it doesn’t hurt to ask, right?

Good thought. We are looking at the discount/coupon options. I have a ton of items to list here, just trying to figure it all out first so we don’t waste time constantly having to rework existing items.

I thought the retailers who offer a lower price once in cart, are offering factory close outs only. I think there was a Supreme court ruling a few years ago about MAP and the ramifications of violating.
That being said, you could offer free shipping, gift with purchase and even gift cards with purchase and not be in violation of the MAP ruling, is my understanding.
As far as discount/coupon options, you want to make sure these are not picked up by search engines.

I agree with OP. Just look at your national retailers. I happened to be on one site this weekend. The company had advertised a discount on a brand of items that’s NEVER discounted. Went to the site to check it out. They can’t advertise the lower price (I guess because of the MAP) but once you put it in your cart, you can see it.

OP is not doing anything wrong. He is just limited by the price he can advertise, not the price he can sell.

Take it to support. My guess is this would not be at the top of the list of improvements, but you never know.

Now if I was working with a manufacturer or distributor that had language in the MAP agreement that said “thou shalt not advertise OR SELL our products below our specified pricing” you bet I would honor that

abbeysattic, you are correct. I was just talking about advertised prices. Manufacturers who want to go beyond the MAP agreement can specify tht you cannot SELL below a certain price, which is different than advertising below MAP prices.

There is no blanket law that qualifies this as an “illegal” or legal activity. Again, I have had very clear conversations with manufacturers who allow me to sell below MAP and the text of their agreement is extremely generic covering only MAP pricing, and not the bottom line sales price. In the end, it’s up to the manufacturer to specify if they are going to push a more restrictive agreement with their retailers. Of course, if that text is in the agreement I sign, I would abide by it.

My Texas Treasures, good point you brought up about the supreme court. MAP isn’t a law, but it is enforceable as an agreement – if the manufacturer put the language in the signed agreement to begin with. It is not enforceable if the language isn’t there.

Again, I encourage you to talk to your suppliers. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say 80-90% of them will allow actual sales prices below MAP.

Also, I just signed an agreement to set up an account with another manufacturer today. It’s a standard MAP policy, very lenient, but this one says I cannot sell their products on an auction site with a reserve less than MAP. I’ve already verified I can still sell at a lower price via my site (after adding to the cart) as long as the cart price is a calculation and not something Google would display in search results. They are trying to level the playing field on Ebay and similar venues. They are also requiring all retailers to publish names, addresses and telphone numbers on their auction so the manufacturer can more easily track violations.

So, the bottom line is that it’s not a legal issue unless the manufacturer specifies a minimum selling price. I guess to be safe one should check with their suppliers to ask these questions.

You could post a coupon? You would list them at the MAP price and then offer a discount coupon off of your booth or make it specific to that item by adding the code into the description. Order today and save 25% by using coupon code SAVE at checkout. They add the item to the cart at MAP price, then apply coupon for a discount… and checkout. I would think that would be in line with any rules…..

I deal with a few manufacturer’s that have MAP pricing…. mine are like yours, they don’t care what you sell the item for as long as you advertise the pricing they set. You can wheel and deal all day with a buyer.

Sometimes I wish more would do MAP… it would keep prices up and stop with the race to the bottom pricing stragety that hurts everyone.